Question 1.6

1.6 In Ourous, the Holy Ghost Fathers seem ultimately to be at the center of your life. …

Indeed, as I told you, I was born on June 15, 1945, and I received the Sacrament of Confirmation on June 15, 1958, in Bingerville, at the hands of Archbishop Boivin of Abidjan. I was baptized at the age of two, on July 20, 1947, by a Holy Ghost Father, and I was ordained a priest on July 20, 1969, by another Spiritan, Bishop Raymond-Marie Tchidimbo.

I owe my entrance into Christ’s family entirely to the exceptional dedication of the Holy Ghost Fathers. I will always admire these men, who had left France, their families, and their ties to bring the love of God to the ends of the earth.

The first three missionaries who founded Saint Rose mission in Ourous were Fathers Joseph Orcel, Antoine Reeb, and Firmin Montels. They arrived around the time of the Easter celebrations in 1912 and presented themselves to the commander of the French Circle of You-kounkoun, who refused to receive them. They continued their travels and arrived in Ithiou. From there, they crossed the river and reached Ourous, where they were welcomed with open arms.

For three months, they camped in the forest. They lacked everything, suffering from hunger and the hostility of the commander of the Circle located about a mile from Ourous. Every morning after Mass, Father Orcel, with trowel and hammer in hand, built the temporary hut that would house them. Six months later, Father Montels became seriously ill from physical exhaustion; he was called back to God on September 2, 1912, thus becoming the “foundation stone” of the mission.

Every evening, the Fathers of Ourous gathered the children near a large cross set up in the mission courtyard, as if to symbolize the heart and center of the village. We could see it from far away: we oriented our entire lives by it! It was around this cross that we received our cultural and spiritual education. There, as the sun slowly set, the missionaries introduced us to the Christian mysteries.

Under the protection by the great cross of Ourous, we were being prepared by God for the painful incidents of revolutionary persecution that the Church in my country would face throughout the rule of Sékou Touré. His dictatorship drove the populace to exhaustion, lies, brutality, mediocrity, and spiritual poverty.

The Church in Guinea experienced a terrible Way of the Cross. The entire young nation was transformed into a valley of tears. Although we owe some thanks to Sékou Touré for his role in winning our independence, how can we forget his atrocious crimes, like the Boiro camp, where many prisoners died after being brutally tortured, humiliated, and eliminated in the name of a revolution orchestrated by a bloodthirsty ruler who was obsessed by the specter of conspiracy?

The physical experience of the cross is a grace that is absolutely necessary for our growth in the Christian faith and a providential opportunity to conform ourselves to Christ so as to enter into the depths of the ineffable. We understand, therefore, that in piercing the Heart of Jesus, the soldier’s spear revealed a great mystery, for it went farther than the Heart of Christ. It revealed God; it passed, so to speak, through the very center of the Trinity.

I thank the missionaries who made me understand that the Cross is the center of the world, the heart of mankind, and the place where our stability is anchored. In fact, there is only one steadfast point in this world to guarantee man’s balance and steadiness. Everything else is moving, changing, ephemeral, and uncertain: “Stat Crux, dum volvitur orbis” (Only the Cross stands, and the world revolves around it). Calvary is the highest point in the world, from which we can see everything with new eyes, the eyes of faith, love, and martyrdom: the eyes of Christ.

In Ourous, we had been impressed by this presence of the cross, which was taken down at the time of Séjou Touré’s revolution and replaced with the national flag. It was finally restored to its place after the dictator’s death.

When the cross was toppled, it caused indescribable suffering for the faithful Christians. By that time, the clinic, the priests’ house, and that of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Versailles, the schools, and the cemetery had already been confiscated and nationalized.

During my childhood, the Fathers taught us the catechism of Pius X, first in our own language, then in French during the last two years of preparation for the diploma. They told us about the Bible and Church history. We children asked a lot of questions, and the Holy Ghost Fathers talked about their assignments in other countries. As night fell, we would sing evening prayer; then they blessed us, and we returned to our huts. You might think I am describing an idyllic world, but this is what it was really like.

My parents never missed a Sunday service. I was an altar boy, first only on Sundays, then Father Marcel Bracquemond asked me to come every day to serve the Mass at six o’clock. He had noticed that I liked the Divine Office. In order to help us perform our duties as altar servers, the Father Superior, Martin Martinière, had assigned one of the older boys, Barnabé Martin Tany, to teach us the initial prayers at the foot of the altar. Then, after Mass, I would return home for breakfast, and then I went to school.